The Blind Leading the Blind

Today opened with a Bible study on the passage in Luke’s Gospel where Christ remarks about the blind leading the blind into a pit. 

It continued with the “shock and awe” of Russia’s “demilitarization” of Ukraine and the predictable reaction from western media. All the predictable handwringing of “worst since 1945”. While this is rather serious, almost no articles I read mentioned the invasion of South Korea (early 50s), or Czechoslovakia (‘68, which my father-in-law witnessed by seeing the Russian signals he was intercepting for the US Army in West Germany), or Afghanistan (‘79). 

It is difficult to argue with the logic below, showing as it does the uncomfortable truth that these days the political fringes often get closer to reality than the mainstream. 

When a known aggressor takes steps to stage for a possible invasion, Christ illustrates the only two options in Luke 14: 

“Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace.” 

The Biden administration instead chose option 3: refuse to provide reasonable diplomatic concessions despite having neither the force nor the will for military resistance. The results are the deaths of thousands and risk of serious escalation.

The blind have led us into a pit with no way out. There were clear options, and multiple months, for “the adults in the room” to avoid this crisis. The first was to insist that Ukraine abide by the Minsk Protocol and provide the eastern, Russian-speaking provinces of Dontesk and Luhansk with the promised autonomy. The second was to publicly guarantee to Russia the reality that Ukraine isn’t joining NATO in the foreseeable future. Both moves would have been easy, with strong international consensus, and minimal costs to global economic and security interests. 

Maybe Putin would have invaded anyway. But that seems unlikely given that it took him 8 years to launch an invasion outside of the disputed provinces. What is more likely is that Putin’s troop maneuvering was meant to provide leverage and bring serious concessions from the West. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, an overwhelming show of force often renders the actual use of force unnecessary. 

A man who could see could have read Putin’s autobiography in which he describes the terrifying ordeal in 1941 of his father hiding from German troops by diving into a swamp and breathing through a hollow reed, then nearly starving in the resulting siege of St. Petersburg. Putin views Russia’s security through that lens. After watching the military infrastructure of NATO, always intended as a weapon and deterrent against Russia, creep closer and closer to Russia, he decided his line in the sand was keeping NATO out of Ukraine, and keeping Kiev’s government out of Donetsk and Luhansk for good measure. 

As Bernie Sanders pointed out, everyone knows perfectly well that Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries near us have no practical right to host anti-US military assets. It is unreasonable for us to treat Russia’s backyard differently, particularly when they have a powerful, trained land army in the area and we do not. 

Instead, the West pursued an incoherent strategy, refusing all compromise, promising sanctions that have been proven not to work, while not imposing the most impactful sanctions of banning purchases of Russian energy or removing them from the SWIFT payment system. There was a lot of waffling on whether Germany would use the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as leverage. Biden publicly admitted that there would be arguing over how to respond to a minor incursion. And much of this discussion heads of state was happening on Twitter. I thought Trump left office in 2021. 

Bottom line, sanctions haven’t worked on Russia in Ukraine for 8 years, and the oligarchs have had plenty of time to figure out exactly how to avoid them. 

And beyond that, there’s no legitimate plan. No plan to make the necessary diplomatic concessions to permanently bring a lasting peace to the region. No plan to impose energy sanctions that might actually cause the Russians to pause. No plan to militarily defeat the invasion. In other words, no plan to avoid serious escalation. 

Now Putin calls all the shots. If he wants, he can establish a permanent land bridge from Russia to Crimea, peel off various eastern states from Ukraine, leaving a rump Ukraine with thousands of refugees and an unstable economy. This seems like the best case scenario. 

In a middle scenario, he goes for broke and decides to roll back NATO by striking in the Baltics, exposing the alliance’s inability and unwillingness to seriously defend its eastern members or strike back. 

Worst case scenario, someone’s able to convince Biden to unleash serious cyberwarfare, touching off a witch’s sabbath of internet and electrical outages that will end who knows when. 

Worst worst case scenario, miscalculations and retribution build until the nukes come out of hiding. As Bertrand Russell said of nukes early on:

You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.

It is likely that this remains fairly local, devastating for the locals with mostly supply chain and inflationary consequences for the rest of us. 

But if this is the beginning of the end of the postwar order, let us arrogant moderns reflect on how we have managed our communities, our politics, our economies, our environment given unprecedented access to information, wealth, and material comfort. 

It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.

And pray for Ukrainians and the Ukrainian Catholic Church. A local Ukrainian Catholic priest already harbors memories of suppression under the Soviets and the church in the motherland is not likely to fare well if Russian soldiers give Patriarch Kirill the go ahead to suppress Catholic parishes.

A Scoffer’s Road to Tradition

 

I grew up assuming that everything about the Catholic Church before 1965, and much of Church teaching after 1965, was outdated, corrupt, narrow minded, and rigid. Contraception was off limits, Sunday Mass was missed, even for lengthy stretches, and holy days of obligation were frowned upon. I could not stand most classical music, particularly choral music. Incense was an irritation. I rebelled at going to CCD. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings were infinitely preferable to the Bible. It did not help that those I knew who were more “conservative” and traditional rubbed me the wrong way personality wise. 

The first chink in the modern heart of stone came during a Confirmation class, likely in late 2003. Our classes were hosted by parish families in their own homes, not in the church school. I vividly remember listening to a recorded talk of a priest assuring us that if Mother Teresa arrived at the Last Judgment tried to enter Heaven on her own merits she’d be condemned, as well as an assertion that missing Sunday Mass just once was the equivalent of falling off a cliff. 

The second was a flash of insight during a Palm Sunday Mass. This is my culture. In a modern America that has so little ritual, so little history, so little family tradition, and so little in common, this sprinkling of holy water, singing of hymns, and the Eucharist was a valuable heritage. 

My convert mother also enjoyed bringing me to Easter Vigil, which I loved right away. The rich, participatory symbolism of the darkness, the Easter Fire, the story that spoke through the marathon of Old Testament readings, the sacraments of initiation for converts, they all called me home. 

I arrived at college, got involved with the Newman Center, which was also an Oratory of St. Philip Neri, run by the Congregation of the Oratory. And thank God. I was in shock that college students actually attended daily Mass, prayed holy hours (some in the middle of the night), and even chanted rosaries. 

It happened that the Oratory, always more liturgically traditional within the Novus, began layering tradition into the 11 AM Sunday Mass. I got used to the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei quickly. Ditto for the requirement for vested male altar servers. I positively rebelled at the Pater Noster, bowing during the censing, and the idea that we would even consider a Latin Credo. But I got used to it. 

Strangely enough, at this time I began watching a scandalous HBO show called The Tudors. Ignoring the fact that it was clearly for women, I skipped the lurid sex scenes and was enthralled at the scenes involving Saint Thomas More and his martyrdom (not to mention the pilgrimage of grace and terrifying iconoclasm). He quickly became my favorite saint, and I was startled during one of the scenes before his execution to hear him praying the Hail Mary prayers in Latin and hearing priests during Mass scenes administer Communion with the phrase “Corpus Christi.” 

Of course, you dummy, all those old saints you love would have prayed in Latin, not English. 

I dutifully learned the rosary in Latin, largely in the Oratory chapel. 

The Oratory chanted the Regina Caeli in Latin after Masses during Easter season. 

Then when I moved to Virginia a priest, who soon after died of cancer, chanted the Parce Domine after Masses during Lent. I was deeply moved. 

My then fiancé wanted a Tridentine Mass for our wedding, but this was too much for me who had no experience with full on Tridentine Masses, and anyway how could we use our wedding to, in a small way, catechize our families and friends if no one could understand anything? We went with an Oratory style traditional Novus Nuptial Mass. 

My wife and I attended a fairly traditional Novus parish for a year and a half after marriage. We began attending the traditional Latin Mass, a low Mass, offered on the third Friday of the month. It was a stereotypical 50s style Mass with almost nothing audible and the prayers positively raced through. It was impossible to follow. But I still went. 

We had friends who were deeply traditional, celebrated the Ember Days, and had their children baptized in the traditional rite. We were scandalized at their children coughing on the salt and didn’t consider it for our eldest three.  We met them leaving All Saints Day Mass in 2012 when I was insolently quizzing my fiancé on the names of the 12 Apostles. 

We moved to another parish after our daughter was 7 months old and we needed more space. The church was 70s drab interior with guitar at every single Sunday Mass. I had lived with this for most of high school but now it was rather irritating. Surely there could be just one Mass more traditional in style? But we thought it was our duty to stick with our geographical parish so we soldiered on. At least the pastor (now at Christendom College) was solid. 

We moved again, this time out of state. Our new parish had priests who were good homilists and fairly with it, but they would take liberties with the liturgy, especially the Scripture translation and the responsorial psalms. We bounced around parishes. What we could not find, though, was anything like the Oratory Mass we missed. I later found out there was an Oratory in Philadelphia about an hour away. 

Our irritation with our local parish grew, and we eventually decided it was untenable as our daughter approached CCD age. 

I had always been interested in history, and finished a massive dive into Father James Macaffrey’s History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution (and his sequel for the 19th Century). I tried to find some book, any book, that took a thorough and honest look at the Church after the Second Vatican Council. 

By some stroke of inspiration I found Iota Unum and began reading the portions free online at the SSPX Asia’s website (I can’t stand the SSPX but the prudent man will not look a gift horse in the mouth). 

That did it. 

To my utter shock and dismay, I discovered Veterum Sapientiae, an Apostolic Constitution written by Pope John XXIII in 1962, less than 9 months before Vatican II. My entire narrative of the modern Church was that Saintly John XXIII was inspired by the Holy Spirit to call a Council which, under the inspiration of the same Divine Spirit, reformed the liturgy. 

This was, to say the least, entirely mistaken. I could not worship or think of the Church in the same way again after 10 minutes of reading the Pope who called Vatican II demand that the Church return to universal study and use of Latin in liturgy, theology, and administration; and deemphasize the study of modern science if necessary. 

I discovered a Latin High Mass happening at a local parish for Easter of 2018 and took my wife and two kids. This time I came with a truly open mind, accepting that I wouldn’t “master” the liturgy on day one. I immediately understood the motif of the Song of Songs: this was a liturgy I would have to pursue. It would not unfold itself automatically before my distracted brain. It demanded focus and contemplation. I got over the poor choir. It helped that the pastor was a scholar and a master homilist who pulled no punches. 

It also helped that the night before I attended an Easter vigil at my local parish in which the baptistry was one of those side-opening bathtubs and in which the liturgy took 4 hours because the Scripture readings were interrupted with cringey ad libitum songs that I’d never heard in my life. 

I came back the next week, alone with the kids after the loss of a close relative. Already the community seemed more inviting and supportive than any I’d seen in a previous parish outside of the Oratory. It was a trying time, as our house had also been destroyed by a burst pipe and reconstruction dragged on for over a year. 

We bounced back and forth between our local parish (mostly because we had good friends who went to Mass there) and the Latin Mass for quite some time, interrupted by a brief move back to Virginia. Foolishly we did not seek out the local Latin Mass in Virginia (now, though another try, ‘twould be too late). 

Just over a year in, I wanted to learn more. Providentially, I met a guy at our local Catholic mens group’s axe-throwing event who was just what the doctor ordered. He sent me The Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform by Laszlo Dobszay, available free online. 

My history, and now liturgy-minded, brain went into overdrive. As my daughter did ballet at the YMCA I learned to my shock that the new Mass was not just the old Mass translated and facing the people. Nor was the calendar I’d followed the traditional calendar. Nor was the Divine Office I’d tried and failed to pray regularly for 9 years the traditional Divine Office. Nor was the extra fasting I had taken on in my plucky teenager years and then recently with Exodus 90 anything even close to traditional Lent. 

I broke down and called my trad Ember Day friend, unsure how to live with the fact that every element of the Church’s liturgy and discipline was torn down in five years, against the express wishes of the Pope who called the Council. He calmed me down and recommended I purchase the Monastic Diurnal from St. Michael’s Abbey. 

The package arrived during work and I eagerly tore it open and pored through it. I’ve had a regular rhythm of daily prayer for the two years since, something I was never able to do before. It also explained the struggles I had with the modern liturgy of the hours: too many options for opening psalms, hymns, and a confusing calendar and 4 week psalm rotation. The Monastic has a one week cycle, with one option for hymns. 

We switched over to the Latin Mass parish full time soon after, just in time for covid to drive our geographical parish into crazytown. 

I read Memoriale Domini, Pope Paul VI’s plea to maintain the traditional manner of receiving Communion on the tongue. I read Sacrosanctum Concilium to learn what the Second Vatican Council actually said about the liturgy. Very much a mixed bag. I dove headfirst into the Rad Trad’s blog, particularly his excellent series on Reasons for the Reform of the Roman Rite. I zipped through Malachi Martin’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, as well as Mary Ball Martinez’s Undermining of the Catholic Church, reviewed in a separate article. 

The problem with traditionalists, as Chesterton said of rationalists, is that they are not traditional enough. 

Paradoxically, I became more politically liberal the more traditional I became. If throwing out traditional liturgy was wrong, so was throwing out the Church’s teaching on usury (see Benedict XIV’s Vix Pervenit), Leo XIII’s Catholic social teaching, and Leo XIII (and previous popes’) warnings about American style political liberalism. And watering down the Franciscan ideal of poverty, and buying into the ever increasing ultramontanism that was already causing traditional triple doctor Adrian Fortescue to label Pope St. Pius X an “Italian lunatic.” 

In an effort to do my part, I sing our High Mass in the choir with my two older kids in tow. My trad Ember Day friend and I sing the Monastic Office in common when we visit one another. 

I do not see a way out of the Church’s current crisis without a full, and unconditional, embrace of tradition. To reject out of hand the Church’s tradition does violence to the faith, whether that tradition is the Bible, a translation like the Vulgate, the writings of the saints and doctors, definitive statements by the popes on economic and political systems, or the liturgy expressed in the Mass, Divine Office, and offshoots like processions (especially Eucharistic processions), music, architecture, and art. 

After all, it was the liturgy that gave us the Bible in the first place, quite literally as in the case of Saint John the Evangelist receiving the Apocalypse/Revelation as he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day on Patmos. 

Do we trust the Holy Spirit’s promise that He would teach the apostles all truth, or not?

I am inherently skeptical of anyone, especially conservatives, who promise a restoration and renewal but maintain a firm rejection of large swaths of tradition. 

I do not see why this is so controversial. True renewal in the Church has always begun locally with those who wish to restore the Church’s ancient discipline and worship, whether Saint Benedict, Gregory the Great, Gregory VII, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Philip Neri, Pius V, Dom Gueranger, and Leo XIII. 

I view the traditional movement as firmly within that mold. You will always have excesses and those within the wider movement who take things too far. Yet the opposition we receive today recalls the opposition many of those figures faced in their own day. 

They were able to have the joy of the despised and persevere, in faith and in healthy obedience, to give us the faith we have today. I pray we may do the same and that restoration comes, if not for us, then at least for our children. 

Pearl Clutching Parishioners

 

We’ve wound up at a downtown parish in a not so nice city. 

When I was in college in Pittsburgh I lived half a block from an Oratory with perpetual adoration, daily confessions, and multiple daily Masses. The cathedral a block away from there had the same, minus adoration.

The local cathedral has one daily Mass three days a week. Confession once a week. And shares its two priests, one of whom is himself shared with a religious order, with two other downtown churches (including my own). Its total weekly collection is roughly $1,400.

Why? Because it’s in an impoverished neighborhood with elevated crime. 80 years ago my great great grandfather would take a streetcar there from several miles north to go to a well attended Mass. Now the only ones left are mostly older folks who have resisted the urge to go suburbia for Sunday Mass and who flock to any young family who happens to show up.

The third church in our parish has 20 people show up to its lone Sunday Mass on a good day and its location makes the hair on most peoples’ spines stand up.

Which begs the question; why haven’t we done anything about this? The Beatitudes, the Last Judgment, the parable of the old widow, the testimony of the early Christians in the Book of Acts, solid Catholic social teaching from Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum) and Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno), and further writings from Chesterton, Day, and Belloc are evidently not enough to soften the hearts of stone of us pearl clutching parishioners.

Clearly these parishes are in these neighborhoods, in their modern state, for a reason. Yet the general attitude among many parishioners is that they will not deign to interact with the neighborhood surrounding their own parish. 

There certainly are safety considerations and one has to keep one’s eyes open. Yet the priests and remaining parishioners are downtown regularly, often after dark, and I have heard of not one incident of violent crime or theft. 

To be honest it is mostly entitled, bourgeois arrogance. We are not willing to risk even the slightest setback to our wealthy, convenient lifestyle. We seem not to remember that people LIVE in these neighborhoods that we will not touch with the tips of our fingers. Why are we entitled to better things than the locals?

There are a few inspirational exceptions. At a synod meeting yesterday a woman from the cathedral and a man from the danger zone church both mentioned how they continue to live in down neighborhoods despite the hardship and risk. During a poignant moment, the woman ask a fellow cathedral parishioner: “Will you trade Heaven for Hell? Will you give up suburbia to become my neighbor?”

I am not a good example and do not claim to have the answers. Yet it seems obvious that our role is to help restore these neighborhoods which conservatives have left to rot and which liberals have cynically pumped for votes to shore up their power base. 

In this I think the distributist movement linked with more classical education is likely the soundest approach. But before we march in there with our 12 step programs we have to be there. If the only ones there are the political grifters and social engineers, we shouldn’t be surprised that what we get from our cities is endless dysfunction and creeping socialism. 

Down with Pews

 

I sent this picture to a group of friends for the Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran. A friend responded with a snide comment about the presence of movable chairs rather than nice pews. Pews in St. John Lateran? Well, then we’ll know we’re in serious trouble. 

I responded with “Down with pews.” A friend replied with the obligatory eyeroll emoji. 

Still, the fact remains that St. John Lateran, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Nativity, Hagia Sophia, and other ancient churches do not have pews. In Medieval times, there might be stone benches on the sides of the nave for use by the elderly, infirm, very young children, etc. A quick online search corroborates this: pews are a modern invention. 

As one blogger says: 

In other words, seating in churches didn’t really become a thing until parishioners got bored enough to wish they were sitting down—that is, about the time of the Protestant Reformation.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. 

We are physical creatures. We respond to visual cues, positioning and physical posture. When you walk into a church and the interior is dominated by wooden pews, you’re going to assume that this place is for sitting passively for prolonged periods. 

Except that the purpose of a Catholic church is to provide a fitting place for the holy sacrifice of the Mass and reception of the sacraments generally. 

Which of the sacraments do you ordinarily receive sitting? 

The homily is one of, if not the, least important aspect of the Mass. Yet I have had family and friends who regularly attend Mass each Sunday speak about the Mass as if the only part that mattered was the homily. One acquaintance even went so far as to say he wouldn’t receive Communion during Mass if he didn’t “get anything” out of the homily. 

What do we expect? The church interior is covered in pews, the majority of most modern Masses is attended while sitting, one of the most common and visible “ministries” is usher, and the latest Council demanded homilies every Sunday Mass. 

Ah, you might say, but at our traditional Latin Mass we spent most of the time kneeling (Low Mass), or desperately trying to figure out whether to stand or kneel at the preface (High Mass). Still though, you remain “the man in the pew,” not a particularly felicitous designation. 

This is not to mention the fact that pews make having children at Mass infuriating as it is entirely unnatural to expect a two-year-old to remain inside a tightly confined space for an hour. 

If the latest Council wanted “full and active participation above all else,” they could’ve started by making a recommendation to scale back on pews. Why should the Mass be heard sitting? Why not allow the faithful to move throughout the liturgy as the Spirit moves them, toward particular stained glass windows depicting a saint or salvation history scene that comes to mind during the Mass, or a side altar, or station of the Cross? With the whole congregation moving closer during the Canon and Consecration? 

Families could bring pillows for kneelers and children’s seating, as many did in the olden days and some still do when attending chapels with minimal seating. And who cares if children are running around inside the church or joining together to form little clouds like at a four-year-old-league soccer game? That sounds a whole lot more like the Christ child’s trips home from the Jerusalem festal pilgrimages (where children evidently had healthy separation from their parents throughout the trip) than a typical, often miserable, Sunday Mass experience. 

This sounds like pietistic nonsense, but it wasn’t pietistic nonsense to the first 1,500 years of Christians. 

When I attended Eastern Rite liturgy for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the faithful stepped out of their pews multiple times to prostrate themselves in the aisle. 

And why not? I imagine there were plenty such traditions in local cathedral liturgy in the West in pre Tridentine days when liturgy was handed down locally and organically and not received via orders from a book published by a centralized bureaucracy. 

The Sunday before last, I descended from the choir loft to find a chunk of congregants earnestly debating about whether to stand, kneel, or sit at points like the Kyrie, Preface, etc. when their Missals had different instructions. I shrugged my shoulders and said it was local custom. But we seem incapable of accepting that some things really are not standardized and can be decided locally and informally. 

Pews aren’t going anywhere until we’re relegated to house churches. Still, I pray for a time when “full and active participation” extends to physical posture and motion during liturgy, emphasizing the faithful uniting themselves to the sacrifice of the Mass (and free movement of children) rather than passively hearing (and judging) the latest homily and NAB translation of Scripture. 

Contra Conservatives

 

Wherein is demonstrated how many, if not most, of the bad things to befall the United States came from conservatives and republicans. 

Traditionalists and conservatives could use some advice from Jimmy Buffet: “Some people claim that there’s a woman (Hilary, Pelosi, Susan from the parish council) to blame, but I know: it’s my own damn fault.”

Republicans do not have a great record in the last 100 years when it comes to modern threats to the faith and to conservatism. Economics and treatment of the poor that would give the prophets Isaiah and Amos fits, the masonic FBI director who created the modern American police state, the Supreme Court justices who mandated legal contraception, abortion, then redefined marriage and who banned prayer in public schools, the Governor who started no fault divorce, the destruction of ancient Christian communities in Biblical lands, the initial go aheads to China, big tech, and big pharma; and an opening salvo justifying the rejection of magisterial teaching by practicing Catholics. 

Hoover

It’s safe to say the 1920s were the last time American conservatism was truly dominant, with Republican Presidents winning the vote in New York City and Supreme Court rulings rolling back earlier progressive decisions. Americans wanted a “return to normalcy” after the dizzying progressive era and the First World War. 

Republicans ruled for almost all of the 20s. And did a fine job enabling debt-financed materialism, giving rise to conniving tycoons like Joe Kennedy, and hollowing out the economy. They also presided over the organized crime of John Dillinger and Al Capone en route to handing the growing Bureau of Investigation to a 20-something Freemason named J. Edgar Hoover. 

When the chickens came home to roost, President Hoover raised taxes and tariffs to stave off deficit spending. The resulting deathblow to the money supply turned what should’ve been a short-term crash into an epoch-defining depression. The depression handed the country to the progressives for 50 years while giving Europe a shove toward fascism and communism. Membership in the American Communist Party swelled in the 30s, as did support for FDR’s alphabet soup, and Huey Long’s tyrannical “Share Our Wealth” program. 

Eisenhower

The greatest damage was done by his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice in 1953. Warren may be the most influential man in the history of America in the 20th century. Warren was Governor of California, and not a judge, before his appointment. Eisenhower likely viewed his political skills as necessary to push the Court to hand down tough but necessary rulings on civil rights for racial minorities (and needed to pay Warren back for getting Eisenhower nominated for the Presidency). But what happens when the fire you use to warm your house and cook your food starts burning down your living room? 

The Warren Court handed down ruling after ruling reengineering American social norms. Griswold struck down laws prohibiting contraception (and opened the door to Roe), Aaron v. Cooper gave the Court unlimited authority over the US Constitution, Yates v. United States struck down laws aimed at suppressing communists, Engel banned prayer as part of the school day in public schools. It’s worth noting that these rulings came years before the countercultural explosion of 1968. Warren was also in charge of investigating the Kennedy assassination, and did such a good job that today no one questions who killed JFK. 

This is not even to mention the interstate highway system. This beauty started its life by physically destroying hundreds of neighborhoods (often poor ones), and matured by hollowing out urban centers, eliminating more efficient public transit, and magnifying concentration of poverty and racial segregation. 

William Buckley

In many ways, I find William Buckley and National Review inspiring for their educated, conservative take. Nevertheless, it was Buckley and National Review writer Gary Wills who planted the seed for modern cafeteria Catholicism by publicly rejecting Pope John XXIII’s encyclical on Catholic social teaching Mater et Magistra in 1961. It was not surprising when Wills made common cause with the liberals a few years later to reject Humanae Vitae. 

It has gradually become clear that Buckley and the National Review Catholics of today are Americanists who support the basic moral teachings of the faith but reject anything that contradicts the agnostic American Constitution and materialist neoliberal economics. Reaganism apparently supersedes magisterial teaching. This is ultimately self defeating, because if magisterial teaching on economics can be set aside, then it’s artificial to claim the Church’s moral and family teaching are somehow in a different, more binding category for the faithful. 

One either accepts magisterial teaching, even in areas that go against one’s preferred politics, or one does not. Buckley and National Review did not, and do not. Hence the good theology and ideas they do hold are unlikely to be taken seriously by working class folks trapped in cycles of unjust wages and usury. 

Nixon

Where to begin? Watergate, opening the door to communist China, getting guys killed by slow rolling the Vietnam withdrawal, and appointing Justice Blackmun, who wrote the Roe v. Wade opinion. 

Reagan

Where to begin? Governor Reagan made California the first state with no fault divorce, and signed an early permissive state law on abortion. 

As President, he did nothing substantive or lasting to roll back massive increases in government, nor was he ever able to lead the Republicans to a majority in Congress. He did, however, preside over searing government deficits and refuse to enforce antitrust law, leadening to ridiculous increases in executive pay and stagnating middle class incomes. He failed to do much to prosecute what Michael Lewis in Liar’s Poker called “an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune” throughout Wall Street. 

Under Reagan, greed was good, Wall Street was king, and families were hollowed out as men spent more time hitting quarterly numbers than building and protecting their families. Paeans paid to Christian values were largely lip service as major cities suffered under dreadful waves of crime and drug addiction. 

There was also the matter of the Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor (an early concession to identity politics) and Anthony Kennedy (who would manage to be on the wrong but winning side of just about every landmark ruling in the 2010s). 

Newt Gingrich

Just when a Republican Congress comes in to rescue us from 60 years of progressivism, we find out the Congressional Emperor has no clothes in front of women who are not his lawful wife. Wonderful. And a nice touch shutting down the government chasing an unattainable conviction of a President for… sexual misconduct. What was so important about securing the presidency for Al Gore that conservatives had to be associated with such obvious hypocrisy?

Bush 43

Bush did a better job than most destroying Christianity in the Middle East with his war in Iraq that destabilized the entire area. Christians who were at least getting by in the past left the area in droves if they weren’t killed. 

It was difficult to listen to Bush fanboys bleat about abortion when even a 2007 survey estimated that the Iraq War directly led to over 1.2 million deaths, not counting the depredations of ISIS that followed. 

When I was growing up, religion was at least respected if not widely practiced. By the time Bush left office, it was positively held in contempt after my generation (who always hated the Clintons and were ripe for the picking for conservatives) watched 8 years of deadly incompetence. 

If you’re wary of standardized testing and massive federal spending and deficits, thank Bush who expanded Medicare and led us into the No Child Left Behind boondoggle. Under a Republican Congress no less. 

Do the same if you’re scared stiff about China, which joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001 and swelled to a quasi superpower during the Bush administration. 

The early warning signs of tech company oligopoly were happily ignored by Bush, who had no issue watching Google acquire YouTube and DoubleClick. The same goes for pharmaceuticals, with several massive Pfizer acquisitions getting smooth approval by the Bush administration. 

There’s also the Supreme Court, as his choice of Chief Justice has turned what should be a solidly conservative Supreme Court into a overtly political institution since the Chief cares more for the Court’s public image among college educated liberals than fulfilling his oath to the Constitution. 

Trump

It was hard to watch traditional Catholics cheer lustily for a man whose goons tore Catholic immigrant children away from their families, who was widely known for his libertine ways, used all sorts of shenanigans to escape paying incurred debts to his creditors like Deutschebank, and did little to give conservatives a good name or shore up his chronically poor favorability ratings. 

Within just a few years he managed to repeatedly attack lifelong conservatives, hounding quite a few from Office, and losing conservatives their supposedly bulletproof House majority as well as Senate elections in Arizona and Georgia of all places. The January 6 thing was bush league banana republic nonsense, though it mercifully put an end to the embarrassment the country suffered on his Twitter account. 

His first Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch teamed up with Roberts to hand the social engineers a victory in the Clayton County case that rewrote the 55-year old Civil Rights Act, giving the Left a sledgehammer to use on any conservative employer or coworker who dares to uphold the reality of biological sex. With “textualism” logic that wouldn’t work on most five year olds. 

But hey, at least we achieved long term normalization of relations with Russia and aren’t about to go to war or anything.

If the Catholic alliance with the democratic party was a disaster from the start, the modern alliance of “conservative” Catholics with the republican party is almost as bad. While political compromises are sometimes necessary to survive, traditional Catholics should take a hard look at the last century and ask the serious question of whether remaining in the republican fold is truly the best for the faith and for the country. 

A Right-Friendly Covid Strategy

 

I’ve been skeptical of everything covid since April 2020. I am aware that makes me come off as the old Groucho Marx “Whatever it is, I’m against it” type. 

So what should we do, Sherlock? For this article, I’m thinking the Biden administration, given the administration’s self-professed competence and adherence to science. But parts also apply to Trump and state governments.

Treat proof of recovery the same as or better than proof of vaccination

Scale up healthcare infrastructure 

Invoke the Defense Production Act to order the mass production of rapid covid and antibody tests, reusable N95 masks, and treatments like monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, etc. 

The only way to get covid “under control” is to quickly and reliably figure out who has it, limit spread using credible measures, and save lives/shorten infections through proven treatments. 

Use OSHA or relevant federal and state agencies to mandate filtering and ventilation standards, especially within multifamily buildings

Every single time I bring this up to a vax-focused relative it is dismissed as too hard. It’s not too hard. Every building manager can install a MERV 12 or higher filter, open the building’s dampers, and measure the results with a CO2 sensor that doesn’t cost more than a couple hundred bucks. 

Having worked on sustainability in buildings for years I am positive that a huge driver of infections in urban areas in the US and Europe is concentrating people in multifamily apartments where the disease spreads freely through the air ducts between units. 

Focus restrictions and punitive actions on those who have tested positive, been exposed, or are in a known vulnerable category

If you test positive and break quarantine, that’s on you, and you should be liable to fines. Applying the same restrictions to the rest of us, when statistically over 75% of us don’t have covid at any given time is not viable or sustainable. 

Provide free or reduced price delivery service and house calls to the elderly and those diagnosed with diabetes or respiratory illness

Anyone not living under a rock has surely seen that many of the people in grocery stores, in restaurants, and in elective healthcare offices at the height of covid were elderly people who had no business doing so. Provide reduced price delivery to anyone whose driver’s license number identifies them as over 65 or whatever threshold you want to set. 

Distribute vitamin D and C kits at every testing center

If someone is concerned enough to get tested, they should be taking vitamin C and vitamin D supplements. This is an easy way to save hundreds of lives. 

Focus direct financial assistance on those with required in-person jobs below regionally appropriate income levels

Throwing out money to every household, including relatively affluent households with the breadwinner working from home (such as mine) is insane when you have lower income individuals out of work for extended periods. 

Forbid administration officials from speaking publicly about vaccines and masks without speaking about ventilation and the preference for n95 masks

The reason no one wears n95s or thinks about ventilation is because no one talks about them. Talk about them. 

Forbid administration officials from speaking about surface sanitization, plexiglass screens, and handwashing

These things were proven not to work over a year ago. It’s time to move on. 

Uphold constitutional rights by avoiding restrictions on churches, other places of worship, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech

The constitution is not suspended during the pandemic, and those of any political persuasion should be allowed to publicly protest, speak their mind, and worship without discrimination disguised as public health guidance. 

Create livable quarantine centers in vacant hotels, resorts

Some, particularly in multigeneration households, need pleasant, social places to quarantine when they get sick. Instead of wasting money on boondoggles like contact tracing, create spaces where people want to go to discourage them from going elsewhere and infecting others.

Demand competence from local and state governments

Why was Seattle and the state of Washington permitting Seattle Sounders games when multiple nursing home residents were dying of covid in February 2020? Why were states not allowed to administer their own tests during the same timeframe? Competent state governments are a must to implement and enforce any public health guidelines, and it does no good to create the expectation that they are empty shells that punt everything to the feds. 

Enforce Accountability

A comprehensive response to a pandemic requires people across the political spectrum to make sacrifices and endure restrictions they hate for a prolonged period. 

Getting people in a country like America to follow through requires universal trust from everyone. A plan and a set of administrators that have lost credibility with large chunks of the country are not good enough. 

Americans need the government to acknowledge and address the abject incompetence and lying they’ve been forced to live with for two years. Otherwise they will not take those officials and their guidance seriously. 

Briefly:

The officials at the FDA who botched the US’s initial covid tests in February 2020 should be named and fired. 

To stay on as Chief Medical Officer Fauci should be removed from any position of influence over NIH grant funding, a clear conflict of interest. 

He should also be ordered to stop playing semantic games about gain of function research, the public availability of his financial disclosures, or his clear denial that masks are effective on 60 Minutes in March 2020.  

If he refuses to comply, fire him. 

Censure politicians who fail to abide by their own covid restrictions, such as Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom. 

Publicly name and fine hospitals that are proven to have lied about their covid statistics. 

Do the same to those who have engaged in malpractice by refusing to use treatments proven to be effective, ranging from vitamin D to ivermectin. 

Demand that officials in the FDA, CDC, and media with links to the pharmaceutical companies disclose these links publicly and, where feasible, recuse themselves from pharmaceutical-related guidance and reporting. How many people know that the head of Reuters for most of 2020 is a Pfizer board member? 

Admit fault

Missteps early in any war are understandable. But the government needs to provide clear answers to basic questions. 

Why did the trained, experienced public health establishment contradict itself on everything from surface transmission to masks for months? Surely these are basic questions that a public health official should be expected to get right from the get-go? Fauci needs to take the lead here and eat some humble pie. 

Get real about masks

Masks are dubiously effective at best. If you’re going to insist on them, provide defensible standards around mask material. When your mask mandates result in most people wearing unfitted cloth masks, your mask mandates get people killed because they encourage some vulnerable people to go places they shouldn’t be going under the false pretense that masks will keep them safe. 

People hate masks. They are uncomfortable and are a barrier to communication. Instead of demonizing people who point out these commonsense issues, address their concerns. Manufacture n95 standard masks with soft, adjustable straps, that are see-through. 

Deal even-handedly with misinformation

Franklin Templeton pointed out in summer 2020 that people vastly overstated the risk of covid, and this was more common among democrats and those who used social media for news. Yet it is only ever right-leaning voices like Robert Malone who are censored. 

Start flagging voices who proclaim vaccine and cloth mask effectiveness that does not really exist. Do the same to any voices and guidance that are still talking about sanitization and hand washing. Call out groups like teacher unions that refuse to return to work when approved guidelines are in place. Do the same to those who exaggerate the risks of covid well beyond the scientific evidence. 

There is no clear cut way to “end” the pandemic. But the current approach of lurching from crisis to crisis is not working. Nor is the Obama-era trope of sticking to failed policies and blaming one’s political opponents and using dorm room meme level language. Governments need to stick to the facts, focus on those directly infected and vulnerable, and restore trust across the political spectrum through honesty and accountability. Covid is not going anywhere, and we need to establish long-term measures to take the edge off that we can agree on and implement successfully. 

Jubilees and Baileys

 

Yesterday’s Bible study focused on the passage in Luke where Christ declares the prophecy in Isaiah 61 fulfilled in the hearing of the Nazareth synagogue:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

After listening to Father Mike Schmitz’s gentle tones on the Bible in a Year, it seems natural that this passage is supposed to refer to the Year of Jubilee. This is a topic fit to give any self-respecting American conservative fits. Highlights from Leviticus 25.

And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. 

A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. "In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. 

And if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. According to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years for crops he shall sell to you. If the years are many you shall increase the price, and if the years are few you shall diminish the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. 

You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. "Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill, and dwell in it securely. And if you say, 'What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?” I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, so that it will bring forth fruit for three years. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the country you possess, you shall grant a redemption of the land. 

"If your brother becomes poor, and sells part of his property, then his next of kin shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it, and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him reckon the years since he sold it and pay back the overpayment to the man to whom he sold it; and he shall return to his property. 

But if he has not sufficient means to get it back for himself, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property. 

"And if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall maintain him; as a stranger and a sojourner he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or increase, but fear your God; that your brother may live beside you.  

You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. 

I am the LORD your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. "And if your brother becomes poor beside you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired servant and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee; then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own family, and return to the possession of his fathers. 

For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him with harshness, but shall fear your God. 

It would be difficult to find a passage more scandalous to American conservatism than the above passage. God repeatedly links acknowledgement of His lordship with restoring property to the poor, canceling debts, paying fair wages, refusing to pursue wealth and sustenance for a full year, and giving the poor what they need out of charity, foregoing any profit. 

The Lord is God, and we are not. It is not our ingenuity, money, economic systems, or productivity that sustain our lives but God. The Levitical economy revolves around God and His justice, not human contracts, pareto efficiency, or GDP statistics. We require a regular interruption to the workaday cycle that prioritizes wealth and commerce over justice and faith. 

This is an early Biblical example of a kind of socio spiritual physics. Our modern world should understand what this means:

You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. "Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely.

Surely we’ve seen this movie before. A society grows economically, abuses the poor, the poor become disenfranchised and radicalized, and then some popular figure takes advantage and topples the existing order. It happened in Israel and Judah repeatedly, with the Gracchi and Caesar in Rome, in communist countries worldwide, and it is happening in the United States right now. 

Traditionalists should ask themselves the honest question of how the United States would look different morally, culturally, and politically had Catholics fully put the social teaching of Leo XIII and Pius XI into practice by working to restore and retain the poor in their property and by demanding just wages and contracts as a condition for participation in the American economy. 

The Catholic and Levitical ideal looks an awful lot like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. In one scene, rich man Potter’s rent collector informs him that George Bailey built a whole neighborhood of homes valued at twice what it cost George to build them. In another scene George tells the bank examiner that his Building and Loan firm is broke. The implication is clear: George spent a life in economic hardship and anxiety because he sold homes at break even prices to enable the poor of Bedford Falls to afford to own their own property. 

Instead, most self-identified orthodox Catholics appear to have sold out to the neoliberal philosophy. Economic anarchy and self indulgence is fine, as long as you’re giving something to the Church (well I can’t tithe because, don’t ya know, my family and all) and not funding Planned Parenthood. 

This is neither Scriptural nor Catholic teaching, both of which make it clear that usury (which powers credit card companies and good deal of retirement investing) is always morally wrong. Both also demand the payment of a just wage to the laborer and fair contracts. They also insist on living a simple life focused on the necessities. 

The stock market portfolio, 401k dependent lifestyle is explicitly condemned in the story of the man in Luke 12 who built larger barns to store his excess. Isaiah 5 proclaims woe to those who join house upon house, field upon field. 

We cannot just ignore the fact that this Reaganist approach to economics directly contradicts Scripture and has trained society to focus on dollar amounts as the only acceptable measure of value. This has created a whole murderer’s row of corporations who have no values at all, or whose only values are those opposed to tradition. 

Former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia (yes, from that Scalia family) personified this selling out of Catholic values in 2020 with an infuriating rule to ban retirement plans from considering Environmental, Social, and Governance factors of companies they invest in. 

Private employer-sponsored retirement plans are not vehicles for furthering social goals or policy objectives that are not in the financial interest of the plan,” Scalia says. “Rather, ERISA plans should be managed with unwavering focus on a single, very important social goal—providing for the retirement security of American workers.”

It should bother us that a public figure from a prominent, mostly orthodox Catholic family used his position to force companies to consider only financial value when investing billions of dollars into the economy. 

Another path would be to take God’s commands seriously, even when they don’t align with convenient partisan politics. Think intentionally about how to apply teachings on the sabbatical year, year of jubilee, and ensuring property and just wages to the poor in one’s own financial investments, purchases, and career decisions. And call out Catholics who think they can justify themselves by separating the Church’s moral teaching on family and intimacy from moral teaching on economics.